Wife: NY man was acting bizarrely before faking his drowning

The wife of a man who was thought to have drowned in the waters off Long Island, N.Y., but turned up several states away days later, said at a news conference Friday that she found emails in which he discussed faking his death, NBCNewYork.com reported.

Evana Roth said her husband, Raymond Roth, and his 22-year-old son, Jonathan, corresponded through email and by phone before and during his disappearance July 28, supposedly while swimming at Jones Beach.

She previously told the New York Post she didn't find out Roth was alive until seeing an email that Jonathan had received from his father.

NBCNewYork.com reported that Roth had put his Massapequa home up for sale a week before he disappeared.

One email provided to the media tells Jonathan to call and update him on developments in New York, but to be cautious.

“There needs to be a way for me to find out how things are going. Call me Sunday night at 8 p.m. at the resort. You cannot call from your phone,’’ he said. “Go to a pay phone or borrow your friends phone.”

According to NBCNewYork.com, one email suggested Roth didn't think too highly of his wife.

“DO NOT allow that ... to give the house away,’’ Roth wrote to his son.

“While I was crying and thinking he had drowned, he was vacationing in a resort and having a drink in the pool," she told the paper.

Evana Roth described her husband's behavior leading up to his disappearance as bizarre.

The Post reported that Roth lost his job as a computer manager after threatening to shoot two supervisors who had demoted him. The incident led to police confiscating a handgun he owned.

She told the Post that he had tripled his life insurance policy in January, then withdrew money from all her accounts and revised his will. She said she was not sure who was named as the beneficiary on the policy.

She said the day that he disappeared, he told her was going to his mother's house. After a few hours, the younger Roth called and said his dad went into the water at Jones Beach and never came out. Police confirmed that Jonathan Roth placed a 911 call and reported his father as missing.

Officials launched an air and sea search last Saturday that lasted for five days.

Then on Wednesday, Roth's brother notified police he had received a call from Roth saying he was in Florida.

Once Evana Roth discovered the emails, she called her brother-in-law, who then called police in Orlando. Officers there checked out an address Roth may have been staying at, but came up empty.